David O. Russell’s 8th feature film, JOY, based loosely on the life and rise of inventor and home shopping star Joy Mangano (Jennifer Lawrence), comes to DVD & Blu-ray on 25th April, and we’ve got interviews with the director, cast and the inventor of the miracle mop herself, Joy Mangano.

The film probes four decades in the upward-moving life of a single-mom-turned-business-magnate to explore how daring, resilience and the persistence of vision carry people from the ordinary into extraordinary moments of creation, striving and love. The genre-blurring story of JOY follows the wild path of a hard-working but half-broken family and the young girl who ultimately becomes its shining matriarch and leader in her own right.

The film stars Academy Award® winner Jennifer Lawrence (American Hustle, Silver Linings Playbook, The Hunger Games series) as Joy, in a multi-hued portrait that spans from youth to her 40s, from dreams deferred to fighting for her honour to striving for self-fulfillment. Joining Lawrence is a typically wide-ranging Russell ensemble including Robert De Niro as Joy’s hot-tempered yet hopelessly romantic father; Edgar Ramirez as Joy’s ex-husband, a struggling musician living in the basement … with her father; Diane Ladd as Joy’s insightful and influential grandmother; Virginia Madsen as Joy’s soap-opera addicted mother; Isabella Rossellini as her father’s well-off Italian lover; Dascha Polanco as Joy’s life-long friend and confidante,; Elisabeth Rohm as Joy’s rivalrous sister and Bradley Cooper as the mogul-style home shopping executive who becomes both Joy’s ally and adversary.

Says Lawrence: “This is a story about so many things. It’s not just the story of Joy. It’s about family, imagination, faith in yourself, about the ruthlessness of success and what it means when you find it. I love most of all how much Joy changes. I loved taking her from vulnerable and self-deprecating to cold and strong, and I loved that she turns into a real matriarch of her family.”

The story of JOY gave Jennifer Lawrence a role different from any she’s tackled so far: a portrait of a self-made woman’s rise from dreamer to housewife to magnate over four decades of learning to believe in her ideas, jockey for power and stay true to her ideals. Lawrence, just 25 years old, is already renowned for her broad, nuanced range seen in roles that stretch from the iconic heroine of The Hunger Games, Katniss Everdeen, to her Oscar®-winning role as a youthful widow in David O. Russell’s Silver Linings Playbook. She also received Oscar® nominations for her role as an Ozark girl determined to hunt down her father in Winter’s Bone and as a loan shark’s jealous wife in Russell’s American Hustle.

But JOY was a world apart from all of those. Lawrence was thrilled to take on perhaps Russell’s most complex female character yet – and to explore the spirit that keeps people pushing ahead even when it seems they have to put their grandest dreams aside.

“I would do anything for David, for a million different reasons,” says Lawrence. “When he called me and asked ‘do you want to make the story of the woman who invented the Miracle Mop,’ I thought, what an incredible character to put into David’s hands. I knew it was going to be something special. It’s full of David’s imagination. It’s not only a story of a woman’s battle to be a success, but also to understand what joy and happiness mean even after you’ve reached your goal.”

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JOY IS AVAILABLE ON DIGITAL HD, BLU-RAY AND DVD ON 25TH APRIL, COURTESY OF TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX HOME ENTERTAINMENT